23 March 2019

Ruminations – 23mar19 (updated 25mar19)

George Rebane

Thought I’d try something different on this cloudy and wet Saturday morning. The Mueller report is in AG Barr’s hands, and from the early assessments it is a nothing burger for the TDS Dems. If so, they are looking at it merely as a speed bump on the road to Trump’s impeachment, which we are assured will follow when the next tranche of “clear evidence” of some, any, wrongdoing will be dug up by the Left’s congressional witch hunts that have yet to get their second wind. I’m going to hold back my sage assessment of the progress toward nailing the president before the 2020 election.

That China’s going to eat our lunch seems like a much more relevant issue to dwell on. So argues AI expert and prominent VC Kai-Fu Lee in his AI Super-Powers –China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (2019). Lee, a Chinese national, has impressive credentials – Google’s speech recognition head, then chief of Google China, then major VC funding AI start-ups here and in China. He goes into great detail outlining our two countries’ different approaches to AI/products development and marketing, and the mentality of the entrepreneurs involved. The punchline is that China has caught up or soon will in all the major arenas of commercializing and researching AI.

A careful read between the lines, makes me think that Lee really wrote this book for China’s communist leadership, complete with data-supported observations, comparative analysis, and critiques of both countries’ government support of their AI sectors. He makes a case for state-controlled support of China’s AI, while carefully outlining the weaknesses of lawless competition and a command research environment that’s not all that conducive for creativity. He ends the essay with a very hopeful vision of how AI-induced systemic unemployment may be alleviated (yes, Lee flies in tight formation with Rebane Doctrine on several important fronts). The only big hole that I saw that he ignores the fact that half of our workforces have 2-digit IQs, and therefore cannot be ‘upskilled’ to fill future jobs. Lee sees them providing the human touch and delivering “love” in human2human caregiving work. No matter, for those interested in the last great century of Man, this is a worthy read.

Speaking of venture capital and private equity, there’s so much of it now sloshing around that portfolio managers have a hard time finding worthwhile projects to fund. This means with all those bucks chasing promising projects, the expected return from such funds is going to suffer. As an example, CA’s underfunded CalPERS govt employee pension fund has $358B to invest and is considering where to add to its $28B already in private equity, that in a desperate attempt to deliver on its la-la land promise to garner a 7% annual return so as to avoid a giant unfunded liabilities mammary in the wringer. To date, it has yet to reach that level even for a single year, and now we have over $1.3T wanting to play in that sandbox. That future doesn’t look good, especially if their darling Dems get their hands on the US economy - fugeddaboutit. BTW, the teachers’ pension fund CalSTRS isn’t doing any better.

This, of course, reminds me of where AOC and her double dummies are planning on taking the country. These vacuum-heads are champions of the liberal tenet that tax rates don’t affect investment risk – think Green New Deal and Medicare For All. The entire notion of monetary utility is unknown to them. Would you wager $100 on a 3:1 bet (Pr(win) = 0.75)? Of course you would, and you’d play that game all day long. Would you take the same bet for $500K – one out of four you’d be out of a half million? I hope you’re getting the idea. But we could come up with some threshold odds where you’d be willing to wage $500K. Raising tax rates messes with the payoff, which lowers the odds. Where do you think CA would be when Silicon Valley's odds finally dip below the risk tolerance threshold? And that Calexit process is already under way.

Notice all the recent soul-searching articles on biased algorithms? Most of the writers (especially if they’re journalists) don’t have a clue about bias or algos; their intent is to write the usual PC pap that the lamestream laps up and delivers. The topic is vast, but can and should be approached with a few principles in mind. First and foremost is that bias infers something that is unfair (and perhaps even unjust, but that’s another dimension – things can be unfair but not unjust). The notion of achieving fairness among multiple parties ranges between very difficult and impossible as shown long ago by nobelist Kenneth Arrow.

So now we have an algo, say, used in social work to determine whether a battered kid should be returned to his parents. The algo is discovered to be biased in that it denies such reunions more with parents of color than whites, on the basis that the kid would most likely suffer again. So should the algo be pulled because it happened to be trained with data that contained a preponderance of non-white cases, no matter that it did a very good job predicting the safety of kids with colored parents. So should we pull the algo from use and go back to the old way with unaided social workers making decisions that demonstrably has resulted in increased pain and suffering by colored kids, in order not to be biased? Or should we continue using it because it clearly saves a known number children from being battered again by their mostly colored parents even though the reliability of such predictions aren’t as good with whites?

As a lifelong practicing decision theorist, the answer to that question is easy to prescribe. What is the quantifiable social utility (remember, all utilities are subjective) that the responsible agency is attempting to extremize (max or min) through its prudent placement of battered children? If it is to minimize the expected number of re-battered kids, then keep using the biased algo (while getting more white-oriented training data). If it is to minimize the political (existential?) cost to department head careers from unsubstantiated charges of political incorrectness, then dump the algo. Throughout my years, the understanding of this nuance has pretty much determined the ideological cast of the decision maker – hint to the reader: progressives don’t like quantifiable utilities, in fact they don’t like utility-based decisions in general – too restrictive.

More later.

[later] Well, maybe a smidgen on Mueller. Will anyone here or across the land now admit to the countless lies told by almost every Dem and lamestream commentator about the existence of “clear evidence” of “conspiracy” and “traitorous collusion” that supposedly threw the election in Trump’s favor? (FN is having a blast playing archived videos of CNN, MNBC, …, and more Dem politicians than you can count, all blasting Trump with non-substantiated charges for two years, and they’re not done yet.) And these are substantive lies, not the inconsequential bluster bullshit that liberals count as Trump’s lies. Also take into account the alleged attacks on Mueller and obstruction of justice for firing Comey. Hell, the hystericals wanted to pass legislation protecting Mueller’s job from a non-existent threat. And then we come to our vaunted intelligence community – remember the Clapper report that got the Trump hysteria started? And given all they knew that was not true, recall all the air time on lamestream media with guys like Brennan and Clapper giving regular interviews convincing people that they knew that Trump was “treasonous” and served as a “Russian agent” – in short, for the light thinkers in the land, the intelligence mavens abetted the TDS hysteria for the last 22 months. Anybody going to hold these pernicious pilgrims to account?

[24mar19 update]The Federalist reports ‘9 Years Into Common Core, Test Scores Are Down, Indoctrination Up’. Of course, you would not hear about any of this from lamestream outlets. Common Core was another one of President Obama’s big consequential lies to the American public – CC would “not only make America’s entire education system the envy of the world, but we will launch a Race to the Top that will prepare every child, everywhere in America, for the challenges of the 21st century.” Well no, the result has been exactly the opposite. But what has increased is the load of socialist crap that teachers deliver daily in the country’s union-dominated public schools. And as reported before, teachers' continuing education under CC, from outfits like UnboundEd and EngageNY, trains them to bring leftwing brainwashing into every subject imaginable. “UnboundEd’s training in reading and math instruction is ‘grounded in conversations about the roles that race, bias and prejudice play in our schools and classrooms.’ Its Standards Institute prepares educators to be ‘Equity Change-Agents.’ To become one, participants are told, they must first acknowledge that ‘we are part of a systematically racist system of education.’” (H/T to reader, and more here)

Big corporations are good,so argues Canadian-American economist Rob Atkinson, president of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, one of the world’s top think tanks for science and technology. Atkinson points out some very surprising data about big vs small businesses not known to many. Perhaps most important are their pay and benefit stats – big company workers make 54% more than workers for small companies, and both high school grads and those with some college make significantly more at big companies. It all has to do with productivity and economies of scale which benefit not only the companies’ employees, but even more its customers and the public at large. Atkinson argues persuasively that it has been technological advances that made big companies possible, and allows them to make enough money to keep innovating and pushing the technology peanut ahead. Readers know my take on corporatism which appears to be the immutable destination of the big getting bigger to the biggest. Atkinson is an advocate of big being prudently regulated by mindful regulations (he gives examples) instead of succumbing to the Left’s howl that big corporations should automatically be busted up by the government (e.g. a la Lizzy Warren who, nevertheless, has nothing against corporatism that contributes to her re-elections). Anyway, before shooting from the hip on this, take a look at the data Atkinson presents (here) and in his 2018 book Big Is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business.

The US advanced its Economic Freedom Ranking from 18th to 12th in 2018 (more here). Now what puzzles me is whether this was due to Trump's tax reductions, regulation rollbacks, and other business-friendly policies and rulings; or was it really due to all the years of Obama's economic policies at less than 2% pent up annual growth that led to this sudden jump which just happened to coincide with Trump's presidency - it's really hard to tell.

AG Barr's letter to Congress summarizing the Mueller report can be downloaded here.

[25mar19 update] Kudos to George Boardman for his excellent column (here) highlighting Gov Newsom’s elitist overriding the will of the people on California’s death penalty, and also for pointing out a serious attempt to breach the First Amendment and the sanctity of our Fourth Estate in Congress’s assault on Fox News. Our intrepid Union columnist and RR reader doesn’t make it easy for me in trying to paint him as progressive when now and then he comes out with a piece like this, which any good conservative commentator could have written. Nevertheless, thank you Mr Boardman.

Comments

It sounds like they took the wood to schiffty overnight, he sure has changed his tune -

Barring a bombshell in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s just-delivered report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, impeaching President Trump should be off the table, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said Friday.

These people are crazy. It is soooo funny. These people been acting a fool for three years. And they found nothing. I’ll tell you what. This report is the beginning for Trump. He is going to sit with the report in one hand and his phone in the other. Nobody is safe. 😂

New Evidence Indicates Cross-Sex Hormones Trigger Major Heart Problems
“Transgender activists hurry to deny and hide these crucial scientific findings. Almost makes you think they only care about pushing a political agenda.”

“Appropriately cowed, Brown quickly withdrew publicity for the study. But more research on related issues is seeping out, and activists may find themselves in a game of whack-a-mole that greatly compromises their credibility.”

These new guidelines are not based in evidence. On the contrary, they contradict the available research. For example, in one study, 139 boys who persistently said they were girls were enrolled around seven years of age. When researchers tracked down those boys many years later (averaging thirteen years later) only seventeen out of 139, or 12 percent, still said they were girls or had doubts about their gender identity. This study, and others like it, demonstrate that the majority of boys who say they are girls prior to the onset of puberty will not say they are girls after the onset of puberty. But the American Academy of Pediatrics is now on record prioritizing the opinion of a five-year-old over the considered judgment of the child’s parents, even suggesting that the pediatrician should take (unspecified) legal action if those ignorant parents refuse to obey their child’s wishes to transition to the other gender.

Calling it a “bluff-vote” designed to help Republicans campaign, the freshman Democrat tweeted, “The GOP’s whole game of wasting votes in Congress to target others ‘on the record’, for leg they have no intent to pass, is a disgrace.” "

I finished Lee’s AI Super-Powers – China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (2019) a couple of weeks ago, and it prompted me to do some research on how prepared California is for dealing with the AI employment impacts. I found a detailed examination by the Little Hoover Commission.

The Little Hoover Commission (LHC) found that between now and 2030 Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies could have a $400 billion economic impact in California. The report details why the state government lacks the infrastructure necessary to plan strategically for and take advantage of AI technologies while minimizing the risks associated with smarter and smarter machines.

The LHC lumps a multitude of technologies under AI, including some in use today, including Siri, Alexa, and Waze for example. In addition to these smart devices, AI also includes pattern and optical recognition, machine learning, deep learning, autonomous devices, and robots both mobile and stationary.

The LHC solution for AI disruption is for employees to expand their education and participate in lifelong learning as more businesses delegate simple, boring, and repetitive tasks to artificial intelligence.

The LHC examines the failure of the CA education systems to prepare students for the future adequately. However, the Commission identified a much larger problem to be solved over the next eleven years, up-skilling the existing workforce with science, technology, engineering, and math skills. This up-skilling is going to be a considerable challenge for an education system that is currently focused on social justice, diversity, and protecting delicate egos in safe spaces.

China’s AI engineers are not burdened by all the wasted energy coping with math class diversity and the social justice of unbiased final exams. They do not hide out in safe spaces but challenge each other to be the best they can be.

California will not continue as the 7th largest economy in the world if it is incapable of transitioning to an economic structure dominated by intelligent machines.

Oh crap he told the truth and he is about to get bum rushed by the socialist antifa and pink pussy hats!

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg poked fun at Democrats running for office Thursday night while explaining his reason for not jumping into a crowded presidential race.
One of the prerequisites for running in 2020 is the need to go on an apology tour, Bloomberg said during a Bermuda Executive Forum in New York. The billionaire businessman gave former Vice President Joe Biden and former Texas Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke as examples of politicians willing to prostrate themselves.

“Joe Biden went out and apologized for being male, over 50, white, and he apologized for the one good piece of legislation that is an anti-crime bill,” Bloomberg said, referring to a crime bill Biden helped pass in the 1990s. He then turned his fire on O’Rourke, who the former mayor described as too wet behind the ears.

Beto, whatever his name is. He’s apologized for being born,” Bloomberg said to laughs from the audience. He also cited his age, 77, as the primary reason for not announcing a White House bid despite flirting for months with the idea.

"Left’s congressional witch hunts " What then was Benghazi, a search for truth that turned up nothing? NO indictments or arrests... no convictions..no plea bargains... It is always the 'other guys' who are bad and never the pubbers, right? All pubber investigations are straight up and all Dem investigations are witch hunts. How convenient.

The Bee had a couple of ridiculous articles today. One on "gerrymandering" and the other on homeless people. The people that write these things must be as dumb as a post. They made me so mad I left long voicemails on their machines. I was respectful but firm in that they are as dumb as a post.

Anyway the redistricting article was pure as partisan left one as they usually are. And the virtues of "citizen" panels extolled. Even though the California experiment shows their data was bogus and skewed the states to the democrats And the example of ONE district in Missouri that a R won was given more space than the SEVEN we lost here. Bogus.

Homeless people in Sacramento get an average of $30,000 per person in money and services a year. Yet they have now trashed the American River Parkway and many other areas. The author's solution? Put homeless shelters in rich neighborhoods. And he extolled the great ideas of Mayor Steinberg who actually had no ideas. And the author "laughed" at the KOMO documentary on Seattle's homeless problem. I saw it myself. Anyway I said until you make these folks take some personal responsibility for their lives nothing will change. That was poo=poohed by the author. Actually not even covered.

The state of journalism and smarts of those idiots is really shown in these two articles. God help us.

Tell that to our dead Ambassador and the other killed in the attack. I am waiting for you libs to tell us where Obama and Hillary were that night. Were they together in the office and she was giving him a Lewinsky with the cells turned off? If you think those hearings were bogus then you would make a good ISIS recruit.

The FUE is complaining about the Union's dispute with the fascist Governor Newsom's decision to place a moratorium on serial child murderers. And this FUE guy told us how terrible it was to have a granny unit next door. Wait till Gavin moves one of these fair-haired killers into the neighborhood.

So, with the media firmly in the DNC hip pocket and the FBI and the other 16 intelligence agencies firmly in Obama's hip pocket... the Justice Department was supposed to make a choice to indict Hillary over Benghazi or anything else?

re RobertC 857am - Adding to Gregory's 1028am, Mr Cross seems to miss the dots that Hillary's many sins (Benghazi, videos, emails, servers, phones, ...) were documented with uncompromising evidence which would have indicted mere mortals (or at least forced them from office), but were instead actively deflected by the corruption of Team Obama. It's still mind boggling that the FBI assessed Benghazi to be too dangerous for its agents to visit, yet quite safe for US diplomats.

Think it will take awhile for it to dawn on the TDS crowd and the Industrial Leftinista Complex that Mueller has completed his investigation. It’s over. Close up shop, turn off the lights. Afterall, they elevated Mueller to a god like status and his integrity and character are unassailable. My one hope is that Robert Mueller is as thorough as those who know him say. Leave no rock unturned. Interviewed 100’s of people. Done.
Haha. Just kidding. It will never be over! Mueller will be demonized by the same crowd who worshipped him as their Sacred Cow. Issue subpoenas to Mueller! Who got to him? What’s Trump hiding? We demand to see every syllable of the report! Trump will block the release of the report. Warning! Trump will block tthe release!! And he better not sneak a peek. This calls for an inquiry. Emergency!
Oh, they fret endlessly over things that have not happened. Geez, give it a week or two. We all have waited over two years, but nnoooo. Now, now, we demand to see it now!

Think Chris Matthews said it best. Instead of asking why Mueller did not question or interview the President, he cried aloud several times in utter exasperation, “Why did ‘t Mueller INTEROGATE Trump?. Interrogate the mother fudger! What, like tie Trump to a chair in a small stark room with a single bare lightbulb dangling over his head? Beat it out of him, lol. And loved their characterization of “Trump and his henchmen.” Henchmen! Goons. Nope, they are still in denial that the Mueller Investigation is completed wiith no more indictments. But, maybe there are secret indictments! Nope.

Now we start the phase of explaining to the Mob that somethings cannot be released, such as the names of folks who were interviewed and no criminal charges brought because they did nothing wrong. Let’s drag the innocents and their names through the grinder! And all the Grand Jury transcripts and testimonies of the uncharged which can only be unlocked by a judge. And forget classified information and national security concerns, and....Trump is obstructing the report! Barr is a henchman. Let’s have another Special Counsel to investigate the Special Counsel report! The fix is in.

The reason Walt and Barry’s in-laws were so upset yesterday is because they have been fed a truckload of horse manure for over two years without a change in diet. Hard to believe some folks actually believe those wild tales. Guess it you repeat a lie long enough, some folks will believe that bull pucky.

As that famous journalist guy said...

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

So what you all are saying is that Benghazi was a "real" investigation and the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt..even though (excuse excuse excuse ) no indictments or anything else came out of Benghazi. Get fu**ing real. You people have more excuses that a 6 year old caught with his/her hand in the cookie jar. pathetic.

BoobieC 1125, do we have to paint you a picture? Hillary was responsible for 4 deaths in Benghazi as she was derelict in her duties to protect them. And she was the person that paid 11 million for the "dossier" that is fake and spurred the "witch hunt" So yes Hillary is totally corrupt and should e in jail. Trump is not perfect but compared to her he is a angel.

re RobertC 1125am - still dysfunctional logic. All were "real" (who is he quoting?) investigations. Only the ones about Hillary began with existential and publicly available evidence of her wrongdoings; Mueller's investigation started with NOTHING, and spent its energies looking for evidence of wrongdoing, which it apparently has not found. More than a little bit of difference there that's hard to grok for leftists.

"So what you all are saying is that Benghazi was a "real" investigation and the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt..even though (excuse excuse excuse ) no indictments or anything else came out of Benghazi."

Benghazi was a real thing. People were killed, including Ambassador Stevens, and in the midst of it... the cavalry was not sent. Afterwards, Ambassador Susan Rice made the Sunday talking heads circuit and told everyone a tall tale that it had been a protest against an ugly bigoted (and non-existent) anti-Islamic video by a Egyptian Coptic Christian in the US that had gotten out of hand.

If you think the upcoming election, eight weeks later, was not the driving force for Rice's rounds to tamp the fires down, there's a bridge in Brooklyn looking for a buyer that you should investigate.

Oh Bobbie. I left a love 💕 ❤️ note for you over on Sandbox @11:34. Hugs and kisses. Now, please try to stay on topic. Awaiting with bated breath your insights of Common Core, China will eat our lunch,, capital and private equity, biased algorithms, a smidgen of Mueller, Airhead AOC, or BiG CORPORATIONS ARE. GOOD!

Now, try to focus on the topic at hand. Focus, Bobbie, focus.. Me thinks you have a crush on Hillary.

Lay some of that French Green Party stuff on us and tell us all about your tummy ache and why biig corporations are not so good....or defend Common Core.

Re:The Mueller Report. Recommended link by Ken Starr. Best all read it so when Punchy and Ozzz come running over with hair of fire about Congressional Oversight, we can explain to them the facts of life. Or you guys can...I have grown weary of fruitless endeavors and tossing pearls before swine.

I posted the link to the full letter in the sandbox. Its worth a rea. I have to wonder how our loud-mouthed lefties will cover this in the blogosphere? Ignore it or accuse the President of tearing a tag off a mattress to change the subject? LOL

Well, As we all knew and never wavered about, the Mueller Report totally exonerates the President. Just released, the four page summary from the AG details it all. Not ONE American colluded or helped the Russians trying to interfere with the 2016 election. And NO ONE including Trump colluded. So since there was no collusion there could not be any "obstruction of justice" for booting Comey out. So there it is. Trump and the country should have a party! But of course, the democrats are moving the goal posts again and are resting their hopes on the Southern District of New York DOJ and even Dr. Suess. But it tells me that Trump was always telling the truth about this and now Americans of good will should apologize to him.

We know the left will never apologize for all the terrible things they said. They called Trump a traitor, a puppet of Putin, and worse. Now they have egg on their face and I hope the media will give as much attention to those fools of the left and their bullshit lies as they did to the President's critics. But we know they won't. After all this time we hear today the democrats will be rejecting the findings and pursuing more investigations at our expense. We have millions of illegals pouring into America but the demoncrats are all in for conspriacy gigs. Toss them out next time you have a chance and let us have responsible people in charge instead of these leftwingnuts like Maxine Watera and Nadler etal.

Seriously, this goes straight to the bottom line in the Resistance! movement. It had no basis in fact.

Prior to the election in '16, WHICH WAS WON FAIRLY AND SQUARELY BY DONALD TRUMP AND THE GOP, Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, had a cow over Trump's refusal to say before the election that he'd accept the result... being equivocal. Trump said it would depend on whether or not it was a fair process.

Now, everyone to the Left... if you want to throw the 2020 election away, keep it up.

Now, people who want to think they're in the middle, like RL Crabb, it's time to take stock of where you're pointed and the people you're supporting. Trump is the President of the USA, fairly and squarely. He has all the powers of the presidency. It's time to cede to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and it's fine if you take to the streets if he goes over the line. But not until he actually goes over the line... your delusions don't count.

And RL... that's not any kind of brand of Conservatism or Republicanism. It's just the Constitution.

“The job of Congress is much broader than the job of the special counsel," Nadler said. "The special day counsel is looking and can only look for crimes. We have to protect the rule of law, we have to look for abuses of power, we have to look for obstructions of justice, we have to look for corruption in the exercise of power which may not be crimes."

Abuses of. Power, Obstruction of Justice, Oorruuption in the Exercise of Power? Did Nadler get a heads up on the not yet released IG report, or was he talking about the exoneration of Hillary Clinton and the framing of Donald J. Trump?

Right from the report, yet LIBs won't even read what it says.
"Attorney General William Barr sent Congress a letter Sunday summarizing the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into the 2016 presidential election, and found there was no collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, “despite several efforts” by Russian agents or intermediaries.
The letter, released to e press and the public, effectively exonerates the president and destroys one of the major attacks by Democrats and the media against the Trump administration.

I'm still debating with myself what the next artificial controversy will be.

The three winners seem to be:

TRUMP'S TAX RETURNS!!!!!
or
Obstruction of justice concerning non-illegal or non-existent activities.
or
Another Trump girlfriend for Paul to obsess about.

The obstruction of justice beef reminds me of the perjury charges concerning non-illegal or non-existent activities....but hey, whatever works in a Resistance. You have to destroy the village in order to save it.

Can someone, preferably from the Left, explain how there was even an opportunity for "obstruction of justice" when justice concludes that no crime was committed? The putative examples all consist of Trump issuing warnings to the country that the whole witch hunt was a pile of crap, and would lead to nothing because there was nothing to which anything could be led. Trump deserves apologies from all the lamestream media for their ignoring his cautionary counsel and continuing with their TDS lies.